I'll Cover Your Heart In Gold Stars
by RedMagic
Summary: Time ticks by and everyday Rachel finds herself fitting into her new persona with more ease and the pain in her heart lessens ever so slightly. AU Puckleberry. Pezberry friendship
1. Chapter 1 Rachel

Hello. Alot of you from other fandoms who know me may know I have a slight obsession with Glee and in particular Puckleberry and Pezberry friendship. I've never had the courage to actually sit down and write something for them though but I thought it was about time that changed.

This is taken from a prompt that was on the Puck/Rachel LJ some months ago asking for Puck to be the head Gleek and Rachel to be the school badass, I figured I'd give it a try. Won't be a very long fic probably 10 or so chapters and POV's alternate between Rachel, Puck and Santana.

Anyway I hope it's okay :)

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**I'll Cover Your Heart in Gold Stars.**

At twelve years old Rachel Barbara Berry learnt the most important lesson of her young life.

People are inherently cruel to anyone they perceive as different.

The lesson is learned on a cold January afternoon when she returns home from dance class to find her daddy crying in the living room and her dad nowhere in sight.

One look at her father's tear stained face and the utter devastation and heartbreak in his eyes is enough for her to know that things would never be the same for either of them again.

It seems incomprehensible to her, that someone could despise something about someone so much that they could take away their life without a second thought. That someone could be filled with so much hate that they could clench their fists and pound them into someone until there was no life left in that person.

Her dad dead, her daddy broken, her world collapsed.

There's a funeral and a wake but honestly Rachel doesn't remember half of it. All she remembers is the numbness that settles over her as they lower her dad into the ground and the feel of her daddy's hand clasping hers as he shatters before her eyes.

Her daddy takes a job in another city and packs their whole lives up into drab brown boxes. It's during the move northwest from Kenton to Lima that Rachel decides she was going to make damn sure she's as average as they come.

The girl with the big Broadway dreams and the bright shiny future, dreams no more.

**X-X-X-X**

She meets Santana Lopez her second day in town, stumbling upon the girl completely by accident at the local park.

Santana calls her a midget and the girl that Rachel was would have droned on at the Latina about basic decency and the proper way to greet someone but the girl she's decided to be in Lima wouldn't dream of it.

Instead she turns to the taller girl, arches an eyebrow and calls her a skank.

They're pretty much inseparable after that day, Santana being fearless and powerful and pretty much everything Rachel herself is trying to be.

The Latina has problems of her own, feelings and circumstances she finds difficult to deal with and Rachel like to think that somehow the two of them together makes things better for the both of them.

Time ticks by and everyday Rachel finds herself fitting into her new persona with more ease and the pain in her heart lessens ever so slightly.

**X-X-X-X**

Reputation means everything to the teens of Lima, Ohio and by the time the two girls reach high school, Santana's rep is very much planted in badass territory, Rachel finds herself considered a badass by association and in all honesty it isn't a bad thing to be.

People leave them alone, for the most part, and the only time there's ever any real trouble is when Santana and herself go looking for it or if some vapid cheerleader type girl rubs either one of them the wrong way.

The Latina tends to go straight for the jugular, her temper as fiery as her Spanish heritage would suggest and anyone who messes with them, if they're halfway smart, soon learns never to mess with them again.

They breeze through days upon days in their private little bubble for two until early into their sophomore year when a teacher with big dreams and sickenly good intentions forces Rachel out of her shell dragging Santana along for the ride.


	2. Chapter 2 Santana

Thank you so much to everyone who have reviewed and alerted. You guys are all rock stars!

This part contains very slight course language and a few phrases which are offensive and are in no way my opinion.

I tried to get Puck's part finished and posted before this one but I'm only half way through his chapter at best so I figured I'd post Santana's first.

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When Santana Lopez was six years old, she fell in love. Of course at the time she had no idea that was what she was feeling, all she knew was that Brittany Pierce was the prettiest girl she'd ever seen and she desperately wanted to become her friend.

And they were friends for a while, best friends even, the kind that braided each other's hair and walked happily together side by side with their pinkies linked and Santana felt like she was living in the land of rainbows and lollipops and nothing could ever tear them apart.

Turns out she was wrong.

Quinn Fabray comes along and ruins everything with her sharp tongue and her repressed Anglo Christian views telling everyone at Brittany's 13th birthday party that she caught Santana staring at the blonde hostess like she wanted to eat her.

She calls her a dyke and a stupid spic bitch and Santana's almost ninety percent sure the blonde girl picked up the words from her right wing father.

The words didn't bother the Latina who'd heard them said often enough that they'd lost their impact, but Brittany, who had stood at Quinn's side and laughed along with the girl as she spouted off her anti – everything hate vomit, doing nothing to defend her had broken her in a way Quinn Fabray could only hope to.

So she ran. She ran until her feet grew numb and her mind grew clear, until she found herself slumping into a swing in one of the parks near her neighbourhood.

She met Rachel Berry that very same day.

**X-X-X-X**

Rachel and her aren't the type of friends that braid each other's hair and while they'll throw an arm around each other as they stalk the halls of McKinley High, they both lack the kind of innocence to wrap their pinkies together in solidarity.

But Santana knows that Rachel has her back without question and Rachel knows that Santana's by her side just the same and there's something to be said for that kind of loyalty.

**X-X-X-X**

The thing about sexuality is, is that it's fluid, you like who you like, sleep with who you want to sleep with and that's all there is to it, when you put a label on it, or feelings become involved things get complicated.

And if there's one thing Santana hates even more than self-righteous blondes on power trips its complications.

So when Rachel drags her into glee club and she locks eyes with the schools star quarterback, who looks at her with eyes so naïve and untainted she loses her breath for a second, she knows shit is about to get complicated.

Especially when the star quarterback just happens to be the latest plaything of the cheer squad's newest captain.

And the cheer squad's newest captain just happens to be Quinn Fabray.


End file.
